


Seige Perilous

by concernedlily



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-24 00:31:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12001182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concernedlily/pseuds/concernedlily
Summary: It was a normal Friday night: Harry had charmed open the locked gates of Hyde Park and was carrying on an enjoyable argument with one of the ancient ashes there, a discussion that had been going on since it was a mere sapling.





	Seige Perilous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ataraxetta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ataraxetta/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy the story! Sorry it's not funny. I tried.

It was a normal Friday night: Harry had charmed open the locked gates of Hyde Park and was carrying on an enjoyable argument with one of the ancient ashes there, a discussion that had been going on since it was a mere sapling. 

_And I think you'll find,_ the tree said in their complex branch-and-leaf semaphore - and then the sound of a car being driven far too hard cut off the conversation as Harry whipped round to see it, automatically twining shadows about himself at the same time, fading into the darkness.

It was a yellow car, utterly obnoxious, being driven _backwards_ , of all things; Harry routinely paid little to no attention to mortals, but he was reasonably sure that that was unusual. Although it did seem to be wending its way around the gracefully looping paths of the park with no little skill, even with the driver hanging out of the window and making vulgar gestures at the car chasing it, right way round this one, and going much more slowly. 

Harry was no seer, but it didn't take much to see the whole endeavour ending in disaster. 

He hadn't bet on such recklessness coming with a tender heart, though. A fox ran out into the path of the yellow car.

It swerved, spun out, flew straight into the Serpentine. 

Harry didn’t know what he meant to do until he was already in motion. He _stepped_ and came out already hip-deep in the water, cold and dark; the car was sinking fast, the back already almost perpendicular and disappearing. There was no sign of any escape - other than the screaming revs of the other car as the pursuers spun around on the grass and drove off - no wet young madman breaking the surface, shaken but safe.

Harry took a deep breath, and dove.

The lad had been unfortunate to go into one of the deeper portions of the lake. Harry could see him, now, in the murk, a pale scared face in the driver’s side window, battering uselessly at the glass, and Harry swam faster, all his mind a steady, unfamiliar drumbeat of concern.

The boy was looking up at him now, beseeching, his eyes round and panicky. He pressed his palm against the window, struggling against the weight of the water filling the car. Harry met his gaze, ignored the startled moment of a yes that filled him, body and mind, and spread his own fingers against the lad’s.

The glass was heavily processed, remembered little more than the factory, but there was just enough, just a glimmer. Harry coaxed it out, the screaming gaze of the young man lending him urgency, reminding it of sand and ash and heat, and it fell away under his fingers.

The boy’s gaze followed it, surprised, and then he was reaching up, reaching out for Harry, and Harry grabbed his hands and helped him scramble out of the window, the sports jacket he was wearing billowing unhelpfully around him, but his weight was nothing to Harry’s strength. 

The lad kept hold of Harry’s hand as they kicked their way up to the surface and air and life, and Harry let him, banishing Merlin’s reproachful voice in his head telling him that the boy had already seen too much. That Harry should leave, confident in the knowledge that the lad would get his threescore and ten, would get himself to dry land and never be quite sure what he’d seen, what Harry had done, with Harry leaving not even footsteps behind him.

They were at the edge. Harry boosted the boy up, got him up and out of the water and lying flat on his back and gasping like a fish, and that - Merlin’s shade said in his head, very clearly - was most definitely his cue to leave, _right now, Galahad, now, I’m warning you -_

He was kneeling by the lad. He was startlingly good looking, away from the grasping hands of the reaper, water streaming off a strong jaw and fine cheekbones and being blinked out of pretty greenish eyes. He blinked up at Harry, dazed, heaving for breath, and Harry put his hand on his chest and said, “You’re all right. You’re out, you’re safe.”

“You saved me,” the boy said, “I saw - _fuck_ ,” and rolled over, practically into Harry’s lap, curling around him and coughing up water, sounding sore and exhausted.

It was so very much time to leave. Long past. 

“You’re all right,” Harry said again, and he smoothed the boy’s wet hair back as he hacked up half the lake, gentle as he hadn’t been in years.

***

His name was Eggsy; which didn't seem like much of a name, but who was Harry to judge? He'd hardly been paying attention to what mortals called their children. Other than to occasionally check that Harry would still do, and by and large over the last millennium and a half it had, as long as he wished to discount the unpleasant century or so as Ethelred which he most certainly did. 

“And how did you come to be in the park?” he said, and sent another surreptitious nudge to the fire to roar a little higher and heat a little more, the better to dry their wet things. Quite why Eggsy had preferred to find a pub with an open fire over going wherever he called home Harry still wasn't quite sure, but he wasn't objecting to Eggsy’s company; far from it, so here they sat, both visibly soaking, which the barmaid was ignoring thanks to Harry’s liberal application of twenty-pound notes against the price of their drinks.

“A bit of this, a bit of that,” Eggsy said, with the most transparently evasive look on his face Harry had ever seen.

Harry raised an eyebrow. When that didn’t work he added, “I saw the other car, Eggsy.”

“Mate of my stepdad’s,” Eggsy muttered. “It was his car.”

“That’s now at the bottom of the lake?” Harry said. It was starting to make sense why Eggsy might prefer to sit in a pub with a stranger, dripping on the sticky floor, instead of going home.

“Yeah,” Eggsy said dismally. “That one.”

“Ah,” Harry said. Eggsy had bowed his head and his hair fell down over his forehead, drying slowly into waves. Acting on some impulse he couldn't name Harry reached out and pushed it out of the way, brushing his fingertips on the small scar that bisected Eggsy’s eyebrow. It was white and smooth, long-healed. Somebody had hurt Eggsy when he was young. 

Eggsy was watching him, his expression blank. He took a drink, slowly, telegraphing his movements, and Harry let his hand fall away. He crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. 

“You think I owe you something?” Eggsy said flatly. 

“Let me take you out to dinner,” Harry said, impulsive, again; this was going to run out his spontaneity quota for the whole century. “Not now. When we’re neither of us smelling of pond water.”

“Dinner?” Eggsy said. Harry had surprised him; he even laughed a little. “Hey, what was you doing in the park, anyway? Gates were locked.”

“Talking to the trees,” Harry said, entirely truthfully, and gave Eggsy a wide-eyed look of smug innocence. 

“You ain't what I'd expect from someone in such a poncy suit,” Eggsy said. He sat back and stared at Harry frankly, and Harry looked back. That was why he wore the suits, of course; a man in a good suit could get away with an awful lot. And barring the odd tweaks in style, a new lapel here and a different cut of trouser there, they'd been a uniform of sorts for the last century. Once a year he asked the actual tailors who worked in the shop for something new and otherwise didn't worry about it. 

“Yeah, all right,” Eggsy said. “Dinner. Why not?”

***

There were a great many reasons why not, and Harry rehearsed his counterarguments for all of them as he jogged up the stairs to the dining room. 

He banged the double doors back in something of a preparatory temper, Merlin and James looking up at the racket, and announced, “I'm taking a young man for dinner.”

“Oh?” James said, politely, and Merlin only sighed and went back to his computer. 

“Well, I thought you might take some interest,” Harry said, his belligerence suddenly without an outlet. 

“Did you, old chap?” James said. He got up and wandered off and Harry sat in his chair and stole a drink of his tea. It was horribly over-sugared, and did nothing to improve his mood.

“Nothing to say at all?” he demanded. Merlin cast a sorrowful eye over his computer and then closed the laptop and gave Harry his attention.

“What would you like me to say?” he said.

“I don’t know. I thought there’d be something,” Harry complained. “Fraternisation with the enemy? Our deep dark secret? Et cetera et cetera?”

“Mortals aren’t the _enemy_ , Harry,” Merlin said pityingly. “If you ever bothered to have a conversation with them you might have worked that out. James has been married forty-three times, for all love.”

“Oh, well, _James_ ,” Harry said. “I'm not going to model myself on him.”

“I've been telling you for years to get a hobby,” Merlin said. 

“Hmm,” Harry said. “Fine. I'll let you know how it goes.”

“Please don't,” Merlin said. 

Harry sat back in his chair and scratched at the table. He was sitting at Alastair’s place, his capital P and coat of arms scratched into the heavy oak, looking as new as it had centuries ago, and he rubbed his thumb over it and sighed. 

“Harry,” Merlin said. Harry could feel his gaze on him; he didn't look up. In the back of his mind he could feel the others, in the delicate strong web that bound them all, boundless curiosity that probably meant he was about to be importuned. “Harry. There's no harm in joining the world, you know. You know he might never come back for us.”

“Please don't start,” Harry said. He knew, of course. Every disaster, every crisis, every war when he didn't return the other knights whispered: on the beaches of Dunkirk, dogfights overhead, most of them had finally given up hope. But not Harry; he knew, but he didn't _feel_. 

“It just might be nice for you to have something outside,” Merlin said, and started to type again. “And when I say nice for you, I mean nice for me, if you're not round here bothering me so often.”

“You're all heart,” Harry said.

The door banged open with great enthusiasm and James bounded back in, followed by Alastair and Roxy. 

“I don’t see the emergency,” Roxy said, sounding coolly amused, slid into the chair next to Harry and pinched the last, cold slice of James’s breakfast toast.

“Not _emergency_ ,” James said. “ _Entertainment_. Harry! Tell them what you just told us.”

“I’m taking a young man out for dinner,” Harry said. He didn’t see why he ought to be ashamed or, for that matter, treated as the bloody court jester.

“A young man?” Alistair said. “You mean - a mortal?”

“How young?” Roxy said.

“Not that young,” Harry said. Eggsy’s face danced in his mind’s eye; he was young, of course, fresh and sturdy even with the shadows Harry had sensed upon him, attractive; but that wasn’t why Harry was drawn to him. There was something else, something about the exuberance with which Eggsy had thrown himself into mischief, the combination of his skill and joy. His youth was there, not in any crude accounting of years, 

“Everyone’s young compared to Harry,” James said.

“We’re the same age! Certainly relative to them,” Harry protested.

James sniffed. “Factually, factually. Not in the thinking.”

“Where did you find him?” Roxy said, eyes bright with interest and just a little bit of laughter. Harry glowered at her.

“Hyde Park,” he said.

“You’re not still hanging around in the parks after hours,” Alistair said reprovingly. “Honestly, Harry. You’re lucky you don’t get arrested.”

Merlin didn’t say anything, but Harry could almost hear the creaking of his rolling eyes.

“We have to _help_ ,” James said. “What does Harry know about mortals? Or anything. Where are you taking him for dinner, Harry?”

“He wants to go to Nandos,” Harry said, slightly sheepishly. He didn’t know what that was, but Eggsy had looked sadly at the phone he’d pulled out of his wet things and said he couldn’t be sure of getting any messages, so they’d had to agree on a time and place before parting.

“Nandos?” James said, with an appraising glint in his eye. “Gosh, Harry. He must be quite the young man. Nandos is fancy.”

“Is it?” Harry said, doubtfully. Eggsy hadn’t seemed like the type to go somewhere fancy, but perhaps he was taking the opportunity of going out with an older man to go somewhere a bit nice. 

He switched his gaze to Roxy, who was looking at James. She ran her fingers through her hair, making it fall over her shrugging shoulders, and said, “Yes.”

“Right,” Harry said. 

“And you should take him flowers,” Alistair added.

“Really?” Harry said. 

“It's expected,” James said quickly. “Big ones. A proper bouquet.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Bloody hell. All right, then. A proper bouquet it is.”

***

Harry stood outside Nandos, the flowers he was clutching being buffeted by surly late commuters through Vauxhall, and thought unpleasant thoughts about the treachery of his colleagues. Almost everyone going into Nandos was wearing jeans or casual dresses; Harry thought he'd seen one person wearing their pajamas. On the pavement outside in his newest immaculately cut suit, with a Windsor-knotted tie and a scarlet pocket square, Harry stuck out wretchedly. 

And Eggsy was late. 

Harry was just on the verge of deciding that he’d gone past reasonable optimism and sailed straight through into played like a fool when Eggsy sauntered up to him. He was even better-looking dry and smiling. 

“Good evening,” Harry said. Eggsy did not look like the kind of paramour one gave flowers to, and he briefly considered pretending they weren't for Eggsy at all, but he couldn't think of a lie that wasn't even more ridiculous than the flowers themselves and so gave up and presented them with a small bow of his head. 

“Those for me?” Eggsy said, but he took them, his obvious surprise not turning into awkwardness. He even went a tiny bit pink, smiling with what seemed to be actual pleasure, and somehow it all skated Harry through on the clothes as well, the doubtful look Eggsy gave his suit turning into an acceptance of eccentricity Harry hadn't known he would have to hope for but now saw would become essential. 

“Shall we?” he said, and offered his arm, playing the part he seemed to have put himself in to the utmost, and after a quick, furtive look around himself on the street Eggsy seemed to decide he didn't know anyone in range, and took it. 

Eggsy didn't even glance at the menu before he rattled off his order and helped Harry pick what he'd have - it sounded awful, but what about the modern human world wasn't - and then sat back, watching Harry in a way that seemed meaningful. Unfortunately Harry hadn't the slightest idea what meaning was meant to be conveyed, and so merely gazed back uncertainly. It was no hardship to look at Eggsy’s lovely face and pretty eyes, starting to glimmer with humour. 

“You got to go up and order,” Eggsy prompted. 

“Of course,” Harry said, flustered. He was going to look a right wazzock walking up to the counter in his bloody suit, but now he looked around there was a queue at the till.

“Nice to bring your son out for dinner,” the girl on the counter said cheerfully.

Harry considered a number of responses. How likely was it that _actually, I’m trying to fuck him_ would cause some kind of scene? He didn’t mind a bit of public disgrace, actually - it was better than public humiliation - but Eggsy might. “Thanks,” he said.

His attention was arrested by Eggsy as he turned to walk back to their table. Eggsy was looking down at the bouquet on the bench next to him, playing with a couple of taller blooms lying across his lap, unaware of being watched, his profile soft and a little tired. Something calmed in Harry, looking at him.

It appeared the whole bloody thing was an exercise in foraging. Harry had to pour out their own soft drinks from a machine and find the cutlery. It all made him slightly disquieted, more than when he’d expected to just sit on his bum and be served by disinterested third parties; this felt dangerously like offering Eggsy food from his own hand, with all the complications that could come with that.

He could hardly tell Eggsy not to eat. It would have to do. Although Eggsy had the look of a chip pincher; he’d have to watch out for that.

“Ta,” Eggsy said, and smiled brilliantly up at Harry as he put Eggsy’s drink down in front of him and slid into his seat. 

He couldn’t think of a thing to say, and instead picked up his own drink and took a long gulp. It occurred to him that perhaps this hadn’t been a very good idea. What the fuck did Harry have to say to a mortal young man? He’d spent the last several centuries doing his best to avoid the buggers.

“So…” Eggsy said. “Watched any good telly lately?”

“Er, no,” Harry said. How weird was it to not have a television? His eyes were better than a human’s, of course - both in colour spectrum and acuity, and in their vibrant molten gold dulled by his habitual glamour to an ordinary brown - and television and cinema were headache-inducing. “I don’t have a television.”

“You don’t have a television?” Eggsy said, in a mix of apparently genuine bafflement and a touching, if slightly infuriating, amount of pity. “Hah. What do you point your furniture at?”

Harry’s furniture in his rooms at the manor, where he spent almost all of his time, was more or less oriented around his drinks cabinet, but that didn’t seem a very good thing to admit. “Well…” he said.

Eggsy laughed. “Never mind. It’s from Friends. You must know Friends, yeah? Even if you never seen it. Everyone knows Friends.”

“No,” Harry said. “Sorry.”

“Jesus,” Eggsy said. “Explains why you was in the park after hours. You must be stuck for entertainment. Or do you live in there? Under a rock?”

“Something like that,” Harry said. 

“Pick up a lot of young men that way, do you?” Eggsy said. A sudden watchfulness accompanied the question, a subtle but definite change from the roughly playful questions before.

“Never,” he said truthfully. Eggsy looked at him carefully and then nodded. He slouched back in his seat and the line of his body became curving, inviting.

“That’s why I said yeah,” Eggsy said, and the smile he flashed then was smaller than the beam from earlier, but more real. “I thought, he might look posh, but we got some things in common.”

“I suppose so,” Harry said. He’d never spent much time trying to find commonalities with humans; it was odd to find that this one was cheering.

There was another silence, but this one felt more natural, even comfortable. 

“Eggsy is an unusual name,” Harry said, feeling like it might be his turn to choose a topic. It was still on his mind. Names were important.

Eggsy shrugged. “Says Gareth on my birth certificate. I’ve gone by Eggsy since I was a kid. My mum started it.” He laughed and added, “She always said it come to her in a dream or something, it just stuck.”

“That’s sweet,” Harry said, thinking it sounded ridiculous. “You’re from London?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy said. “Still living with Mum. Same estate where I grew up.”

He sounded defiant about the last bit, as if Harry ought to understand something by it. Harry said politely, “Oh. And your stepdad?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy said. “I never knew my dad. Mum always just said he left before I was born. One night thing, I think.”

“I see,” Harry said.

“How the other half live?” Eggsy said, a touch bitterly.

“I wasn’t close to my parents,” Harry offered diffidently. Had barely known who they were, more like, but that was simply the norm for them, and in any case it had been a very long time ago; he couldn’t remember their faces. 

Thankfully the tension was diffused by the arrival of their food, to which Eggsy applied himself eagerly. It was nicer than Harry had expected.

***

They went for another drink after the restaurant, Eggsy clutching his flowers with every sign of appreciating them, although Harry suspected they’d end up in the bin before he got home; enough people were looking at them with either surprise of vague disdain that Harry had got the message of how unusual it was. He suspected the erstwhile stepfather, about whom Eggsy had evaded saying anything more, might take similarly unkindly to Eggsy’s being the subject of the attentions of an older man.

Eggsy loosened up a little with a lager in him. Harry stuck to Guinness. It reminded him of the peaty beers of the past, practically a meal in themselves.

That gave him an idea, and he affected an interest in history - Eggsy mentioned Oxbridge at one point, knowingly and sneeringly, and Harry gave a smile that allowed the assumption without confirming it - and was able to get a conversation going on the back of it. 

Eggsy was bright, very. Initially every bit of knowledge was shrugged off with _did it at school_ or _must’ve seen it on tv somewhere_ , but once he noted Harry’s open approval he relaxed into it, shining at not having to pretend macho idiocy, although he didn’t seem to have a particular interest in any period. Just a sharp brain, and enough belligerence not to be scared to contradict Harry. (He was almost always wrong, of course, but he wasn’t to know that Harry was actually sharing his own life; no doubt what he was saying was accurate as far as the historians knew.) He had a way of looking at the world that appealed to Harry, forthright and funny and just sour enough to be interesting.

“We should do this again,” Eggsy said, lingering on the pavement at throwing-out time. He swayed into Harry a little, although he hadn’t seemed at all drunk inside. He was warm, and his eyes glittered beautiful hazel-green up at Harry before his gaze lowered to Harry’s mouth, brazen.

“I look forward to it,” Harry said. 

***

Roxy watched him for a good ten minutes before she said, “Do you want some help?” in a way that suggested she was only just succeeding in stifling laughter.

“Please,” Harry said ungraciously. He handed over the mobile phone he’d been struggling with and watched her start to flick through it so quickly she couldn’t possibly have been reading all the set-up screens.

“Went well with your new friend, then?” she said, glancing up at him.

“He asked for my number,” Harry said. “I should have told him to send a telegram. Do you know how much these things cost?” Not that he’d paid for it, precisely; he’d handed over one of the cards Merlin provided, but the payment would fizzle away into nothing overnight. They put it down to glitches in the system now, apparently, and Merlin had made Harry listen while he bored on for some time about how convenient it was before he’d handed the card over.

“Yeah. So, what’s he like?”

“Nice,” Harry said oppressively, and turned his attention to the papers scattered in front of him. He’d picked up an Evening Standard, a Time Out, and something called Stylist, all waved at him on the street on the walk to the phone shop. He never usually accepted them, but he’d thought it might not be a bad idea to see what was going on in the world, if he was going to see Eggsy again; and he very much hoped to see Eggsy again. If the sodding phone ever worked so he could get in touch with him.

The papers were all very dreary. He’d marked down a couple of events he thought might appeal to Eggsy, some tedious billionaire had a tedious plan to hand out free phones, some blond politician had said something very stupid about this leaving Europe business, half the country was going to be underwater soon because of climate change, and Harry oughtn’t go out this winter without a berry lip. He couldn’t say his fact-finding was going very well, and cursed himself for not having paid a bit more attention over recent years. 

“You go out with mortals,” he said to Roxy.

“Well, given it’s that or shagging my brother’s friends...” she said and Harry suppressed a delicate shudder at the thought. “Here, it’s working. Do you have his number? Do you want me to show you how to text?”

“Yes, please,” Harry said. Eggsy had evidently acquired another phone after the watery death of the first one. It had looked shiny and expensive, and Eggsy had looked a bit guilty when Harry had asked where he’d got it. In retrospect perhaps Harry had sounded suspicious, but actually he’d just been fishing for the name of a shop.

The door banged open and James said, “Oh good, you’re here. Tell all! Did it go well? Did you pull?”

“Never ask me such a thing again,” Harry ordered, repulsed. “Anyway, I believe a gentleman would never kiss and tell.”

“That’s a no,” James said, and sat down. He was beaming. It was most unsettling. “Lock the door, Roxy.”

“What do you mean, lock the door?” Harry said. “Fuck off, James, I’m busy.”

“Mortals move very quickly these days,” James said, and Harry just registered the evil glint in his eye before he swept Harry’s magazines off the table and dropped a banana and a box of condoms onto it. “Get practising.”

***

The phone was a pain in the arse. Harry typed out _just a quiet day_ , laboriously, in response to the conversation Roxy had started off for him, and rewarded himself with a tumbler of Laphroaig, or as he thought of it the only thing of worth ever produced by mortal hands.

Eggsy had also had a quiet day, which he nevertheless managed to describe at some length, engagingly enough that Harry didn’t throw the phone out of the window. After one message that seemed far too short for the length of time it had taken him to create though, Eggsy sent through _how’s the new phone_.

It was a fucking nightmare. _Fine, it’s very intuitive._

_u learn the camera yet_

Harry had planned to learn the camera never. There was nothing he cared to keep a permanent photographic record of. _Yes, of course._

_send me a pic then_

There was certainly nothing in this room worth keeping a permanent photographic record of. Harry carefully took a slightly blurry photo of the oil painting over the fireplace, a couple of hundred years old and of indifferent artistic value, depicting a duchess showing off an alarming amount of cleavage (one of James’s much-adored women d’un certain age and also by coincidence crashingly loaded), and sent it off.

 _lolol_ Eggsy sent back. Harry was pecking out a query when his phone beeped again.

 _I meant like_ Eggsy said, and then there was a photo on the screen.

The background was insalubrious; could Eggsy really be doing _this_ in what looked like a public lavatory, grubby white tile doing nothing to detract from the starkness of the cock shot.

Eggsy’s prick was mouth-wateringly lovely, nicely thick and gently curved, offered up to Harry with his foreskin drawn back to show the head of his cock reddened and glossy, making Eggsy’s hand look small and pale where he gripped it just beneath. There was a peculiar sort of beauty in its sheer brashness, or perhaps just the idea of Eggsy’s desire being so compelling as to get him stripping down and sending such a thing to Harry. 

The phone vibrated again and Harry figured out how to backtrack out of the picture. It was another one, a picture of Eggsy’s face this time, blushed pink and smiling nervously.

 _alright? not too much?_ the next message said.

 _Not at all_ Harry sent back, as hastily as he could type it out. A thumbs-up from Eggsy and he sent back, impulsively, _you’re wonderful_.

 _I got to get back to my mates_ Eggsy said. Harry wondered what was supposed to happen next. He could ask James, he supposed, but he didn’t really want to. James was a nosy bastard and this felt like something Harry wanted to hug to himself, just for a while. The dots appeared again, and then _when can I see you again?_

***

It wasn’t quite as easy as that. Eggsy had family commitments, apparently, but eventually, a couple of days and quite a lot of texting later, they met again in Kensington Gardens; in daylight hours, this time, and Harry walked through the gates like a normal person.

“Hiya,” Eggsy said, looking up at him from where he was lying on a small hillock. He looked beautiful there, crowned in grass-green, squinting against the sun, smiling. Harry returned the greeting, feeling eager and a bit ridiculous. The child next to Eggsy ignored him until Eggsy gave her a reproving nudge and said, “This is my sister, Daisy. Say hi to Harry, Dais.”

Daisy gazed up at him with the gentle malevolence of the very young before carefully placing one small, sticky hand on the innocent silk of Harry’s favourite tie, and giving him a beaming smile.

“Isn’t she lovely,” Harry lied. “Hello, Daisy.”

The girl examined him for a moment more and then, her expression turning flat, turned back to her brother, hiding her face on Eggsy’s shoulder when he put his arm around her. “Mum’ll be along in a bit, she’s been helping her mate with a cleaning job nearby,” Eggsy said hurriedly. Harry had a moment of dismay - he should’ve been more effusive, Merlin had warned him that the mortals took childhood very seriously these days - but then with another look the stiff line of Eggsy’s body resolved into just the opposite; Eggsy was worried about Harry thinking less of _him_ , having to bring his sister to their date. As if Harry cared, or frankly knew, about standard human behaviour. 

“That’s fine,” Harry said, as cheerfully as he could manage. Then, because he certainly wasn’t above bribery, “I saw an ice cream van just back there. Would you both like something?”

It passed him a bit of the time, anyway. The image of Eggsy dedicating himself to licking the 99 Harry bought him passed a bit more, and then he was carrying Daisy’s ice lolly and the cone back carefully.

“Didn’t get anything for yourself?” Eggsy said, accepting his cone, and the first slow swipe of pink tongue up the side of the dripping vanilla ice-cream was exactly as good as Harry had pictured.

“I’m not very hungry,” Harry said. It hadn’t even occurred to him, frankly, but the small, startled smile Eggsy gave him made it seem like the right answer, as if Eggsy were surprised someone might just do something nice for him without getting something out of it for themselves.

He wasn’t the only one who seemed well-bought by the small gesture. Daisy still didn’t seem to want to speak to him. Or possibly just didn’t speak; Harry had little idea how old she was, and less about what was the appropriate level of development for her. But she came close, and allowed him to hold one of her little trains so she had a hand free for her treat. It was faded and a bit scratched, enough to have been one of Eggsy’s own toys. Harry had never been on a train, far too much cold iron, but he was reasonably sure that even if they were blue they didn’t have a human face wearing an obnoxious expression.

“You’re good to take care of her,” he offered.

Eggsy shrugged. “It was bring her out or leave her with my stepdad, and he ain’t bothered.”

“Mm,” Harry said, rather than saying something that seemed very likely to be wrong. He hadn’t picked an easy mortal to take an interest in, that seemed obvious. The ones of James’s he’d met generally had seemed nice but essentially quite dim, much like James himself. Certainly none of them had seemed the type to be wildly but competently driving through a park in a stolen car one night, and a few days later affectionately looking after a small sibling in the very same place.

Daisy handed her lolly stick to Eggsy, who grimaced but put it stickily in his pocket, and plopped onto her bottom on the grass.

“Say ta, Dais,” Eggsy prompted, slightly belatedly.

“She’s fine,” Harry said. There was a desultory patch of her namesake flower next to them and Harry passed his hand over them subtly, coaxing the earth to nurture the tiny dormant life nestled within, giving them their own instant spring. The resulting daisies were proud and verdant, triple rows of pure white petals, and he picked the best and started to make a chain. That got him a great deal of interest; she toddled over to sit with him, and giggled when Harry draped the circlet carefully over her head.

Eggsy was watching him, a bit of a crease on his forehead; he was too young to have such troubled lines on his forehead and Harry leaned over, impulsively, and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Do you want a crown?” he said.

That cleared his expression. “Think I’m all right, cheers,” Eggsy said, but he caught at Harry’s tie himself, pulled him in again. This kiss was longer, gentle intent behind it; Eggsy’s lips were warm moving beneath Harry’s, his mouth soft and open.

Eggsy pulled out his phone and glanced at it, got smoothly up and said, “Mum’s on her way.”

“Perhaps I’ll wait for you here,” Harry said.

Eggsy’s face filled with sly humour. Daisy reached up to him and he bent to pick her up, settling her on his hip. “She don’t bite, come on.”

He marched off, and Harry trailed after him.

Daisy made an enthusiastic cry after not too long, as the playground came into clear view, and Eggsy let her down to go running off.

“And you’re going to introduce me to your mother as…?” Harry said, trying not to sound as sharp as he felt. Courting a mortal boy was one thing; meeting his bloody mother was quite another.

Eggsy glanced at him, inscrutable. “Just gonna tell her you’re Harry.”

That opened up the alarming question of what he’d already said, that ‘Harry’ might mean something to her. Daisy was running full-tilt up to a pretty, tired blonde who swept her up and cuddled her; a moment later she was wriggling to be let down again, and Eggsy jogged ahead to help her into the swing she ran to next.

It left Eggsy’s mother free to put all her attention to Harry, which was rather disquieting. She was near the tree with the tiny, old-fashioned sculptures of elves and gnomes, caught in their business in oak and caged after to prevent the curious interference of little mortal fingers. Harry knew how they felt.

“Hello,” she said, more aggressively than he really felt was warranted. “I’m Michelle. Eggsy’s mum.”

“Hello” he said, and shook her hand as quickly as manners allowed. “Harry. Eggsy’s… a friend of Eggsy. I mean, we’ve been for a drink. Not that we drank much. A normal amount. He went home after. Alone.”

The look she gave him could have frozen the Beltane bonfire. He wondered briefly if the truth would’ve gone down about as well as the appearance of being a pervy older bloke interested in her son; it didn’t seem possible it could’ve gone worse.

“You seem familiar,” she said, slowly, and ah, so it was entirely possible for things to deteriorate. “Have we met?”

“I don’t believe so.” He was absolutely sure; he’d barely had a conversation with a mortal in her lifetime. But when he looked more closely at her, he couldn’t be entirely sure. There was something about her; a flickering around the edges: not magic, but touched by it. Somehow. It could have been a thousand different things, and Harry couldn’t say for sure whether any of them were his kind.

“Mum, you okay if we jump?” Eggsy said, coming up. He kissed his mother on the cheek, moving her attention expertly to him and then smoothly on to Daisy, pointing out where she was at the top of a slide and waving for attention.

“Right, yeah, thanks, love,” Michelle said, flustered, and Harry faded a little, allowed the clamour of the playground to take him over. She looked vaguely through him as she bade goodbye to her son.

“So that’s your family,” he said to Eggsy.

“We ain’t talking about my family,” Eggsy said, his gaze dropping to Harry’s mouth, stepping in close, and all thoughts of Eggsy’s real life fled.

“I have a flat nearby,” he said, unsteadily. Eggsy blossomed, and Harry let Eggsy take his hand and lead him away.

***

Harry didn’t actually have a flat. But Roxy did, and Harry had her keys in his pocket, secured with a great deal of eye-rolling and the extraction of a promise to thoroughly clean any surfaces he and Eggsy touched.

(“That means anywhere you fuck,” James had added, helpfully, “assuming you know how, you old fart.”)

Even if Harry hadn’t known how, he thought he would’ve been able to work it out, with Eggsy bright and sweet against him as soon as they were inside. He responded beautifully to Harry’s hands on his hips hauling him close, even better to Harry taking smooth control of the kiss, making it teasing and slow. 

Slow seemed better - easier. Being with Eggsy meant something. And it seemed to matter to Eggsy, too. He was trembling in Harry’s arms, making bitten-off little noises into Harry’s mouth like he was embarrassed.

He was wearing a hat, the brim tilted up in a way that had made him look aggressive in the park even as it highlighted the perfect strength and structure of his face, the thin angularity of his jaw and cheekbones and slanted eyebrows. Harry pushed it off gently and Eggsy fluttered his eyes shut as Harry ran his fingers through his hair, over the vulnerable curve of his skull to rest his palm on the back of Eggsy’s neck. A quiet moment there, neither of them breathing, and then Harry urged Eggsy softly back up and into another kiss, deeper, more thorough, definitively leading to bed.

Eggsy was eager, more practiced than Harry himself was. Apart from in the matter of Harry’s suit, which Eggsy wrestled off him with invective that Harry kissed out of his mouth, laughing a little with the relief of awkwardness on both sides.

Eggsy himself was easy to bare. His jeans pushed down, his t-shirt pulled over his head, Harry returning irresistibly to his mouth once more as soon as Eggsy tilted his face up to him. 

He was narrow under his clothes but solidly muscled, the kind of body that came from relentless activity, supple and smooth-skinned. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been intimate with a mortal, Eggsy’s life under his hands as lightning-fierce and hot as the magic of Harry or his own kind. He mouthed along the line of Eggsy’s shoulders, inquisitive and more possessive than was sensible, slid his palms across Eggsy’s flat stomach to find purchase on the slight curve of his hips with urgency so high he barely knew himself, a loss of control Eggsy seemed too gratified by to have really understood. 

Sex was a confusion of feeling and perfect sensation. Eggsy liked Harry on top of him, liked to be kissed through the nervy rise of his pleasure, liked Harry's mouth around him and didn't seem to mind that Harry was careful with him, or when Harry pressed his mouth against the slim scar on Eggsy’s eyebrow when Eggsy used his hand on him after, at the end, to hide that he was calling Eggsy's name. 

“All right?” he said after, sleepily, and turned over like he meant to stay, sliding a hand possessively onto Harry’s stomach. 

“Wonderful,” Harry said softly. He hadn't shared a bed with anyone while he slept for centuries, but it was the truth. 

***

“You've been seeing a lot of that boy,” Merlin said, twiddling a pen between his fingers in his most annoying way. 

“Have I?” Harry said. 

“Roxy said you've turned her flat into a shagpad without so much as a by-your-leave.”

Harry slouched in his seat and scowled. “Well, if she doesn't like it she can complain to me.”

“Be nice to her,” Merlin said reprovingly. “She's stopped James putting secret cameras in. He had twenty quid on the lad dumping you within the week.”

“Sorry to _disappoint_ ,” Harry said. “You're not jealous, are you, darling? You're still very nice in bed yourself.”

In a way, at least. _Any port in a storm_ was more like it, which of course Merlin knew perfectly well. It had crossed Harry's mind once or twice that perhaps he'd been wasting rather a lot of time, never deigning to sleep with mortals, but then he saw Eggsy again, kissed him, smelled his skin, touched him in bed and talked to him, and it only satisfied him that he'd been quite right. Eggsy was unique. 

“Please,” Merlin said, with an eloquent look of disgust. “Don't you want to know what I've found out about him?”

“No,” Harry said stoutly. Eggsy was Eggsy; everything Harry he needed to know he got straight from the source. 

Merlin threw the pen at him. Harry plucked it out of the air just in front of his left eye and hunched his shoulders. “Fine. Yes.”

“Nothing,” Merlin said. “There's nothing to find. He's very normal. Other than having the arse of the millennium to tempt you, apparently.”

“I knew that,” Harry said, castigating himself for suspicion and inconstancy. “He's special enough just for who he is. He's completely normal.”

***

Roxy did in fact complain to Harry; apparently his failing to open the door to the Ocado driver was the last straw, even when he asked her, reasonably, if he’d been supposed to let the man in with Eggsy draped alluring, nude, and messy on the sofa. For some reason this hadn’t made things better, and also Merlin had told him off because she’d bought an expensive new sofa and made the shop pay for it.

“Not that it ain’t nice, but wouldn’t you rather go back to yours?” Eggsy said, dismissing the pretty sprawl of the City across the Thames with one disdainful glance and brushing up against Harry suggestively.

“No, it’s… er, not today,” Harry said. He turned and started to stroll down the bankside, dodging groups of prattling tourists wandering all over the pavement.

Eggsy didn’t join him immediately and Harry turned after a few moments and looked for him. Eggsy’s gaze was shadowed beneath the horrible fitted cap he was wearing, but he looked serious, even unhappy, to the extent that Harry was able to read such things on mortal faces. Quite a difference to his playfulness just moments ago. Flattering as it would be to believe that Eggsy was so disappointed simply because he was so keen to get his hands on Harry, it didn’t seem that likely; Eggsy couldn’t have any shortage of offers and he was charmingly enthusiastic in bed but there was always a little reserve. Harry had never commented on it because he suspected he brought his own measure of awkwardness, always trying to hold back from any display of power. 

He hesitated a moment, and then reached out his hand. It felt odd, being so demonstrative; they’d never touched so casually in public: but good, too, when Eggsy smiled, small and disbelieving, and came to him. His hand was dry and warm and Harry could feel the pulse beating through his wrist. He knew it usually without noticing it; fell into the pace of Eggsy’s frail mortal heart and fucked him to it, rhythmic and deep. He found his steps falling into it now, and Eggsy matched him.

Pleasurable as it was walking with Eggsy, fingers entwined, exchanging the barest of words, Harry found it unsettling too, although he didn’t know why. Perhaps it was the doubtful, or occasionally disgusted looks they garnered; he’d never bothered before to notice what mortals did or didn’t approve, and even now he wasn’t sure if it was the apparent age difference or that they were two men, but he felt seen in a way he disliked. He refused Eggsy’s suggestion of stopping for a meal, bought them coffee and end of the day half-price sandwiches in a generic coffee shop that boldly and joylessly called itself _Eat_ instead. They kept walking.

Eggsy wanted to at least pause, so they backtracked a little and sat on the promenade in front of the theatre. This, Harry did know; James had conceived of a desperate passion for an actor and insisted on coming to see him constantly, although Harry didn’t think he’d got anywhere with it. The theatre then had been a little way off from where they were now, but if Harry squinted a little, stripping away the modern fripperies in his mind’s eye, the pub and the paving, it didn’t seem so long ago. Four hundred of their years, or more? He’d seen tales told of themselves on stage, sometimes, he and his brothers and their King, drifting further and further from anything anyone believed in, Roxy’s hand on his knee gripping so tight her nails drew blood. He didn’t go any more, although Merlin did; he thought the magic of it was worthy of study.

“You’re quiet tonight,” Eggsy said. He put his sandwich wrapper back in the paper bag and leaned back on his hands, careless of the thinning crowds still walking in front and behind.

“Just thinking,” Harry said helplessly. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Eggsy said. “What you thinking about?”

“Just… this,” Harry said, and waved his hand at the rounded white walls of the theatre, the incongruous crowning thatch. “What it was like, in the past.”

“You ain't that old,” Eggsy said. Harry looked at him sharply but he was already looking back at the theatre, his expression peaceful, a grin just touching the edges of his lips. Just a tease, and Harry the one reading too much in, making things unpleasant.

“Come on,” Harry said, adding his rubbish to Eggsy's. “Let’s keep on.”

Eggsy took his hand this time and they walked on, the silence a little more comfortable this time. They skirted round the Hinde and Harry managed to avoid the question of his shipping experience, which was non-existent, none of them being able to leave English soil. Eggsy had been on ferries (‘over to France with my step-dad for booze and fags’) but that was about it; he hung over the dry dock and talked about travelling with his voice full of longing, and Harry stood a little back and brooded on what the fuck he thought he was doing romancing a mortal whose lifespan was about the same of Harry's more classic ties. 

They cut around the back and Harry paused by the small, lonely ruin of the palace, looking up at the delicate, intricate rose window picked out in now-grey brick. Mortals were capable of great beauty, when they chose. 

“I don't think I even knew this was here,” Eggsy said. “Fuck. I probably should get out the estate more.”

They were briefly alone. Harry pulled him close and kissed him, deep, desperation he couldn't explain roiling through him. He wanted to show Eggsy, he wanted Eggsy to _know_ , and he pulled away just enough to press kisses to his nose, his cheek, delicately over each eye. 

“Imagine it,” he said, and drew the glamour. Eggsy opened his eyes and they were filmy, seeing the living painting Harry made for him, the medieval city coming up around them, as good as Harry could make it: the ghastly smells of waste and the raw acridity of the river, the firelit torches sputtering smoke into the bright galaxies of night sky, the bustle and laughter and plotting of the evanescent court life, the people fading around the edges. 

He could have held it for hours, watching the surprise and pleasure on Eggsy’s face: he was so hungry for new, for _change_ , but he needed to convince Eggsy it was mere fancy. He held the illusion for a second, two, three - and let it drop and vanish on the cool dusk air like flittering moths.

“Did you -” Eggsy said, vaguely, and Harry made a show of turning to him as if he’d been lost in thought again over the small plaque describing the remaining wall. Eggsy said, “... nothing,” staring at him, and Harry drew him near again, kissed him until Eggsy was back with him, his slack mouth turning lively, his tongue pressing gently into Harry’s mouth and his hands warm on Harry’s back, sneakily pulling Harry’s shirt out of his trousers to find skin.

“Cool, innit,” he said, when he pulled back, almost apologetically, as if castigating himself for imagination, and Harry was surprised to find himself hating the deception. What it would be to _truly_ share this with Eggsy; all the years and experiences of his long life put into Eggsy’s eager hands and his agile mind and given back to Harry shinier and more interesting.

“Very,” Harry said. He wriggled his shoulders and smiled at Eggsy, readying himself to head on, and Eggsy’s gaze dropped again to his mouth, hungry and intent.

“C’mon,” Eggsy said and Harry found himself being towed along the street. Eggsy dithered a moment at the corner, between the lights and delicious smells and alleys of Borough Market and the private dark silence of the cathedral, and then made his choice. 

Eggsy tossed himself over the spiked fence as if he were no more than running up the stairs. Harry didn't have youthful musculature and fearlessness, but he had his own ways, and he summoned a wind to help him climb lightly over and drop into the gardens. Eggsy was on him immediately, crashing them back onto the railings, crashing a kiss against Harry’s mouth. Enough that Harry was confused by it, concerned, this aggressive Eggsy quite different with his kisses desperate and wild, tasting of blood.

Oh, but it was good. Soft grass beneath Harry, stone singing to him, twisting shadows about them to hide Eggsy’s glory as he lay atop Harry and pressed frantic kisses to his face and fucked their cocks together in his fist. Harry came first, gave his pleasure up to the earth and the river and the air, and Eggsy cried out above him, head thrown back to the sky, and came too.

“We should go,” Eggsy said, aeons later, and tried to raise his head. His sticky hand pressed against Harry’s shirtfront, warm.

Harry urged Eggsy’s head back down to lie heavy against his collarbone, wrapped his arms more tightly around Eggsy’s slender trembling body. The stars were still shining bright and cold, giving Eggsy a look of silvery perfection, and the streets were still around them, quiet enough to hear the river.

“It’s all right, love,” he said. “We have time.”

***

Harry gestured Roxy ahead of him through the narrow exit from the arcade and followed her down the street. A half-familiar blur almost caught his attention but he was juggling all of her shopping bags and the tablet she’d forced on him earlier during coffee, helpfully prepped with dozens of open windows with details of flats he might like to rent for himself ( _see how good I am to you?_ she’d said, laughing in the light streaming in through the window, and he’d been pleased enough to laugh himself, and kiss her hand for the gesture).

It was an intriguing thought. A flat - a home - of his own, for Eggsy. Not to move into (not yet, which was a compelling and disquieting thought) but a place for them to be alone, safe, together.

He trailed her into the shop and handed the bags gratefully over to Christopher to arrange delivery. “Tea, sir?” Christopher said, locking the door again behind them, and Harry nodded his thanks and collapsed onto the sofa. The tablet was calling to him and he started flicking through it once more; the flats themselves were boring but picturing himself and Eggsy in them had an irresistible shine. 

“Hi, Harry,” Merlin called down the stairs. He sounded irritated and Harry collected his tea, waved Christopher goodbye for the evening, and went to see if there was anything he could do to make it worse. 

“Have you heard from Tristan lately?” Merlin said. Harry swatted James’s feet off the table and went to peer over his shoulder at the computer. “He says he's lost two fortunes at poker and can I send a car.”

“How do you lose even one fortune in Wales?” James said. “There's nothing bloody there.”

“You know he finds a way,” Roxy said.

“Of course he does,” Harry muttered, and took a restorative sip.

There was a thump downstairs, and the lightning-snap of breaking glass. The wood panelling around the room cracked into life, branches emerging, reaching for one another, the door stretching and bursting into grove-green wilderness, winding into a protective yew shield.

Merlin was already up. The stylus he used for his computer lengthened in his hand, sticky power gathering around the wand. “I’d forgotten it could do that,” James said, blankly, his chair fallen to the floor behind him. His sword was in his hand. So was Harry’s; he’d barely noticed.

“An intruder,” Merlin said, grim. He eyes were full black, Roxy’s too, and she put her hand on his shoulder, both of them speaking in unison the words that seemed to hang in the air like woodsmoke.

The tree withdrew from the door only grudgingly. Harry put his hand on the wall-sapling nearest to him and whispered to it in his mind, coaxing, adding his strength to theirs.

“I’ll go,” Roxy said, and before any of them could forestall her she was a house sparrow, small and swift, flying out of the door.

Merlin was the first of them to know. He snapped his head to Harry, his eyes clearing, leaving him himself again, crotchety and caring, and he said, “Harry -”

Roxy yelled for him next, and Harry was out of the door, down the stairs, skidding to his knees, next to Eggsy’s broken body. The branch from the front door had pierced him through the chest. 

“Eggsy,” he said, “Eggsy, love, don’t worry, I’m here, you’re going to be all right.”

Eggsy’s hand was limp when he took it, Eggsy’s face slack when Harry bent over him and kissed his lips and cheek and nose and eyes. His fingers spasmed, trying to grip, and Harry choked and said, “ _Eggsy_ ,” and Eggsy grimace-smiled, blood on his teeth, and said, “I just - thought - you was married -”

Outside, people walked past, umbrellas up in the dusk drizzle. Part of the defences: to outsiders the shop reverted to looking normal, no matter what. As normal as it must have seemed to Eggsy, breaking in, looking for Harry and the woman whose bags he’d carried.

“Eggsy,” Harry said, stroked his hair and brushed away his own tears from Eggsy's cheek. Eggsy's eyelids fluttered, his beautiful green eyes flat, his agonised breaths whispering away, and Harry shouted to Merlin, “Do something!”

“It's as like to kill him as anything,” Merlin snapped, but it was so plain nothing could be worse and he was already coming to kneel on Eggsy's other side, his trousers getting wet with blood.

He put his hands on the ruin of Eggsy’s chest and Harry bowed his head and covered them with his, helpless. James’ hands came down on his shoulders, warm and tingling with energy, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Roxy doing the same with Merlin, lending her might, the air around them crackling with it.

Merlin spoke. The old language, the one that rumbled in Harry’s bones more than it stirred his ears, the mortal plane dimming around them in Harry’s eyes as power flared blinding white and their own world tried to break through.

Eggsy screamed. 

Arched, their hands slipping in his blood, fire licking through his veins, and Harry bit down on his lip and hung on through the brute force of magic remaking flesh, dragging home soul.

Eggsy was whimpering under them now, speechless horrific agony, lost.

Alive.

“There,” Merlin said, hoarse. “He’s -”

“ _Here_ ,” Roxy said, something of wonder and terror in her voice, and Eggsy opened his eyes.

Harry had always thought his eyes beautiful. Now they were green and hazel and brown; otherworldly; fey. Eggsy’s mortal side slaughtered, stripped back to the true silver-singing truth of him, his bloodline winning out over death and pain and magic.

Roxy fell to her knees at Eggsy’s side with them, and Merlin laid his hand back over Eggsy’s remade beating heart and said softly, “Yonder is that sword that I spake of.”

There was a silence, star-spangled and air-pure, as if all of nature had drawn its breath and bowed down. 

And then -

“Well, fuck me,” James said. “Him? Really? You certainly can pick them, Harry.”

“Fuck off,” Harry said, mechanically. Time limped back, the slowed seconds of panic and blood-worked magic giving way to lumpen reality. 

Merlin stood up, swaying as if he were old, leaning against the wall for support, leaving crimson smears on the green wallpaper. Roxy cast an anxious glance at Harry and Eggsy and then went to him. She put a hand on his back and talked to him quietly.

James was staring at Harry with unabashed interest, even as Eggsy rolled onto his stomach, giving wracking coughs that spattered blood onto the carpet. It had needed replacing anyway.

“What are you going to do with him?” James said.

Harry bent over Eggsy and with some difficulty levered him up and them himself up until, Eggsy protesting and pained in a way that tore Harry to bits, he’d got Eggsy standing, albeit all but collapsed against Harry.

“I’m going to put him in the bath,” he said, with as much of his tattered dignity as he could manage, and started them stumbling for the stairs.

***

They’d built the attic into a small bedsit for Merlin decades ago, because he didn’t always remember to leave the shop very often. It wasn’t much, but for the first time Harry gave thanks for Merlin’s rather more sybaritic tendencies: it contained a big, soft, canopied bed, and a deep clawfooted bath that had been newfangled at the time and was probably now so antique as to be fashionable again, and not much else.

Harry chucked the whole bottle of bath oil he found in the bath and set the taps running as hot and hard as they could. Eggsy was lying on the floor, making it almost as gory as they both were. Eggsy’s clothes were going to be a write-off, which would be a disappointment to him, although not to anybody who had to look at him.

“Eggsy?” he said, crouched next to him and stroked his cheek. Eggsy was fine; Harry kept telling himself, he could see the healthy colour in Eggsy’s cheeks and see his regular easy breathing, but he had an idea the horror of seeing and feeling Eggsy die under his hands wouldn’t soon fade.

“”M all right,” Eggsy said. “Fuck. Had worse hangovers, yeah? Spend most of them on the bathroom floor and all.”

His voice trembled, and broke on the last sentence. Harry leaned down and kissed his forehead. Eggsy reached up and grabbed for him and Harry breathed in unsteadily and responded, moved where Eggsy wanted him and kissed his mouth, tasting dried blood.

“Harry?” he said, after.

The kiss hadn’t felt like the last; it couldn’t have been. “We’ll talk,” Harry said. “Just - let me.” He couldn’t bear the sight, smell, idea of Eggsy still covered in his life’s blood another moment.

Eggsy wrinkled up his nose. The blood was drying stiff on his clothes and itchy on his skin; it couldn’t have been very comfortable for him either. He said, grumpily, “Yeah, all right.”

Eggsy needed help to strip down for the bath. He stepped into Harry as soon as he was naked, not at all sexual, just a simple wordless plea for the comfort and reassurance of skin, and Harry hugged him in tight, sliding his hand up to tangle in Eggsy’s gritty, sweaty hair, desperately relieved to be holding him again.

Eggsy dunked himself under the water almost as soon as Harry helped him into the bath, like a reflexive urge to be clean. Harry perched on the edge of the bath and as soon as Eggsy surfaced, spluttering like his own unexpected panic at being under had distressed him more, his hand was at the back of Eggsy’s neck, a steadying weight, warm even after the heat of the water. Every sensation would be a lot to take for a while, until Eggsy got used to it, the elements of the natural world almost too keen to embrace him.

“What the fuck’s the matter with me?” Eggsy said.

It was soft enough to be rhetorical, if not entirely intended to go unheard, but Harry felt protectiveness rise within him anyway. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, fiercely, leaned down and kissed Eggsy again, precariously, pushing him gently against the recline of the bath. “We’ll talk. You’re fine. You’re perfect.”

He pulled himself back to sitting, careful of the balance of the freestanding bath, and stopped midway into getting up to fetch Eggsy a cloth to wash himself. The dip had cleansed Eggsy superficially, the oiled water turning ink-cloud pink with blood, and now Harry could see the new mark on his chest.

Even healed, looking tender and new but whole, the devastation the guardian magic had wrought was clear. It was a large, vicious scar right in the middle of Eggsy’s chest, the skin pale and raised and smooth, right over his heart and spidering out to his defined pecs and flat stomach. Harry’s own heart thumped as if in sympathy and he reached out without meaning to, needing to know from the visceral reality of touch that it was really as well as it looked, that the vivid wound still behind Harry’s eyes when he blinked was really gone.

Eggsy shuddered when Harry touched it, tipping his head back, and Harry pulled back. “Sorry.”

“Nah,” Eggsy said, thickly, and his gaze when he reopened his eyes and looked at Harry was familiar, the heavy-lidded glaze of coming pleasure. “Doesn’t hurt. Just… feels. A lot.”

Harry swallowed and reached again, catching the oiliness of the water on his fingertips before he ran them over the edges of the scar, as exquisitely gently as he could manage, and Eggsy sighed and relaxed in the water, letting him. He reacted to every caress as if it were electric, the overwhelmingness of this sensation something he knew, could accept within his current knowledge of the world, and Harry touched him and loved him and watched his cock thicken and bob in the refraction of the water.

“You need to wash,” he said, when the water started to get cold, Eggsy fully hard now and moving as if he was willing to forget the trauma just for a little while.

Eggsy blinked his eyes open, dazed and pretty. He put his hand to his chest, instinctively, met Harry’s hand there, and Harry twined their fingers. “I don’t want to look,” Eggsy said, whispered, confessed. “I don’t even know… _fuck_.”

“You’re beautiful,” Harry said, meaning it, and Eggsy flushed, redder than could be accounted for by the lukewarm water, turned his face away and started to wash himself, briskly.

Someone had put the heating on from downstairs, with unusual thoughtfulness. Harry wrapped a warmed towel round the dripping Eggsy and he seemed more comfortable covered up.

“I’m afraid there’s only the bed,” Harry said, awkwardly. He’d felt glad of that, before, but now felt obscurely that perhaps more distance might have been better. It didn’t matter: he wasn’t taking Eggsy downstairs to face the others. Eggsy didn’t protest, just glanced around and then padded over to the bed, leaving wet footprints behind him.

Harry was covered in blood too. He’d managed to forget while he’d been tending to Eggsy, but it was horrible the moment he remembered. The whole thing was a lost cause, the trousers a mess from knees to ankles, the shirt a bloody-handprint-covered crown court exhibit. He took the whole lot off, down to his underwear, dropping it in a pile with Eggsy’s clothes to be binned or burnt, and sluiced himself down briskly with a flannel and the cold tap.

Eggsy was sitting on the bed; under the covers, the hangings pushed aside and the wet towel on the floor. He was hunched over, staring at his own hands like they were foreign to him, but when Harry approached cautiously he looked up and gave Harry a shaky smile.

Not exactly a glossy invitation, but Harry would take it. Eggsy shifted forward a little on the bed as he climbed onto it, making room, and Harry moved behind him, leaning against the headboard. There was a long moment when he feared that would be it and then Eggsy let out a long breath and shuffled back into the vee of Harry’s legs, leaned back against Harry’s chest and let Harry wrap his arms around him, and Harry buried his face in the nape of Eggsy’s neck and breathed him in, his damp hair caught incongruously with the richness of roses from the oil and the familiar warm scent of his skin.

They stayed like that for some time. Eggsy relaxed against Harry slowly, the stressed line of his back softening, allowing himself to take the comfort Harry wished so badly to provide. Harry held him and thought about nothing, as hard as he could; just how good Eggsy felt in his arms, the slight fresh sweat springing up where their bodies clung together, letting the moment be.

Eggsy shifted, eventually. Harry kissed his shoulder and waited.

“So?” Eggsy said.

Harry considered his tack. Would lightness help? He said, “Well, I might be able to give you a good guess as to who your father is.”

“My father?” Eggsy said blankly. His stomach tensed under Harry’s hands, anger or misery, and he said, “So is that why - you and me? Fuck, you… I should’ve known someone like you wouldn’t’ve never gone for someone like me.”

He moved like he meant to get out of the bed and Harry said, “ _No_. No, Eggsy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I don’t know who it was, but the candidate pool isn’t large. You and I, that’s -” he paused. He couldn’t say coincidence, not now; it was obvious it hadn’t been, Eggsy in the park that night when Harry had been there too. He could see the weavings in his own life, even if only when he looked back. But Harry’s decision to save him, how they’d immediately been drawn to one another; that he would guard fiercely as his - their - own. “I didn’t realise, not until you came into your power, just now.” 

Eggsy was still stiff, his head bowed again. Harry slid his hand up, covered the scar over Eggsy’s heart again, feeling the smoothness of Eggsy’s skin, and said, “I love you.”

Eggsy shook his head. Just tired, confused, not a denial; he reclined again onto Harry’s chest and Harry kissed his temple, aching with tenderness. “Who even are you? Who am _I_.”

“Someone I didn’t expect to see again,” Harry said simply. “Once, you were the greatest friend of our leader. His first weapon and his last line of defence.”

Eggsy shook his head, strands of his hair tickling over Harry’s chest. “No, that ain’t me. What the fuck? I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Nothing,” Harry said, and discovered it was true. If Eggsy stayed with them, Harry would stay. If Eggsy chose to go, Harry would go with him. He’d given enough of his life over to waiting. “I don’t want anything. You’re still Eggsy. All that matters is you’re safe, you’re here.”

Eggsy trembled against him and then he was turning in Harry’s arms, soft and wild, his skin almost glowing, his eyes still glittering with all the colours of land and sea, and Harry wrapped his arms around him and bore him down flat to the bed.

***

 

This time he didn't have to hold anything back; Eggsy didn't understand, not yet, but he knew. Harry let his habitual glamour drop, first, let his eyes blaze gold and the roundness smooth away from his cheeks and ears, let his strength show, and Eggsy whined under him and arched up, responding instinctively to the magic soaking around them both. 

Eggsy drew Harry down to him. Their first kiss was almost timid, a careful brush of mouths, testing again. Harry clasped his hands with Eggsy's and drew them above his head, letting his whole weight carefully onto Eggsy, letting his tongue dip into Eggsy's mouth, nectar-taste sweet and precious. 

Eggsy moaned and writhed under him and Harry gasped as he wrapped his legs around Harry’s waist, power pooling and sparking around them as they kissed, deeper and slower. Eggsy was yielding to him, beautifully, and it struck Harry with eager desire and terrifying responsibility, what they'd done, what they'd woken Eggsy to; it was his nature to be claimed and used, lethal and loyal, and that was Harry’s, now, he was Harry's, needing so much. 

“Please,” Eggsy said softly, and then flushed, looking shocked at himself. At his sharing the sentiment with Harry, not his having it, reserve shattered, and Harry kissed him again, lingering, bit at his chin, left sucking marking kisses down his throat and over his hammering warm pulse. 

“What do you need?” Harry said, although it came out muffled in Eggsy’s skin. The scar was warm under his lips, as smooth and pale and perfect as if years old, contrasting with the firm skin and muscle of Eggsy’s chest as he explored it, taking his time. The tendrils of it stretched and faded away almost all the way to Eggsy’s stomach and collarbones, wrapping around his sides, permanent evidence of how Harry had nearly lost him and found him in the same moment, and Harry couldn’t stop himself touching it. Eggsy took in a sharp little breath every time he licked, and his cock twitched against Harry’s chest.

“I want you to fuck me,” Eggsy blurted and Harry elbowed his way back up the bed, kissed his downcast eyes and pink cheeks. 

It wasn’t something they’d done. He’d assumed Eggsy had no interest, and that had been fine with him, but Eggsy was shaking against him now with how much he wanted it, moving with restless urgency. Eggsy spread his legs for Harry and Harry rutted against him a moment, helplessly; just that made Eggsy tip his head back on the pillows and moan, as if everything Harry did brought him sensuous pleasure.

“You’re sure?” Harry said, and he meant to… oh, everything, kiss every precious inch of him, suck him first, get him off and have him relaxed. Eggsy wrapped his arms around Harry’s neck and begged again, feverishly, and Harry nipped his full worried-red lower lip and slid his hand between Eggsy’s legs, between the full round cheeks of his arse as Eggsy arched up eagerly to make it easier.

He conjured oil and rubbed at Eggsy’s hole, his tender tight entrance, and Eggsy was already soft and welcoming, like he really did need this; like his body was ready for it, wanted to be fucked and full, taken. Homecoming, as if his body reclaimed from mortality needed the mastery of their own kind and this way would do as well as any other. Harry kissed Eggsy as he slid a finger inside and Eggsy fluttered around him, hot and greedy, the kiss turning filthy and wet and deep as Harry made him ready.

The sound he made when Harry slid inside him was amazing. Harry wanted it again, desperately, but he made himself stay slow, feeling Eggsy open around him, taking Harry inside. He felt part of Eggsy, shatteringly so, and he rubbed his thumb on Eggsy’s cheekbone until Eggsy opened his eyes and looked at him.

“I’m all right,” Eggsy said in a blurred voice, as if what was happening in his body was too big to put attention to talking. “”S’good, come on, fuck me.”

“Eggsy,” Harry said unsteadily. He was almost all the way inside now, his cock a lightning flashpoint of pleasure snug in Eggsy’s clenching arse, and the instinct to _fuck_ was taking over from the instinct to take care of Eggsy. Eggsy squeezed down when Harry was as deep as he could get within him, cried out and clung, and abruptly they were the same thing. 

Eggsy’s need in his untutored magical strength translated to pinpricks of heat driving Harry on, finding their rhythm, ancient and right, their bodies moving together in spiralling pure pleasure, until Eggsy was sobbing with it, overwhelmed and raw, Harry dicking into him with no thought but climax.

When it came, it was transcendent. Magic wound to a peak exploded around them like bonfire sparks, racing heat at the centre, and then Eggsy was in him. In him, of him, and he was Eggsy and Eggsy was them, twisting gratefully into the lace of their kinship, his life unfurling in Harry’s mind even as Harry knew the long centuries of theirs were implanting into Eggsy’s. The final thing to make it real, irrevocable, and they came together, almost an afterthought of climax, the greater pleasure of bonding already taking up every sense, every moment, their one past and all of their futures.

***

“What do I do now?” Eggsy whispered.

“Nothing,” Harry said, stroking his hair back from his forehead and kissing him there, feeling fiercely protective. “We’ll worry about it in the morning.”

Eggsy yawned and stretched. The intensity of the sex had calmed him; even outside the magical surge and communion of it Harry could still feel him, distantly, the connection between them unbreakable now. He knew it, but perhaps Eggsy had still needed to hear that simple _we_ , the reassurance and commitment of it. 

“Okay,” Eggsy said, “I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,” although he put the lie to it immediately after by snuggling into Harry in a way that made it impossible for Harry to even dream of getting up and disturbing him, drowsy and sweet as he was. 

He dozed off after a while. Harry slipped out from under him, carefully, and hunted out trousers and a shirt. Eggsy really would want tea when he woke, and while there was a kettle in the small kitchenette it wouldn’t be making any tea unless Harry went out to forage for milk and sugar, and probably also for teabags Merlin hadn’t had in a cupboard since before the millennium. 

He wouldn’t have to go far: there was a small kitchen on the next floor. He’d be back well before Eggsy woke, he could slip back into bed beside Eggsy as if he’d never left, hold Eggsy and soothe him through whatever nightmares or memories might come.

“Harry,” Merlin said, quietly, when Harry stepped out of the door of the bedsit. Harry, feeling strongly that the better part of valour was to not get into a bloody great row, stepped past him.

“ _Galahad_ ,” Merlin said, behind him, and Harry stopped. “You know what this means.”

“Do I?” Harry said. He took a deep breath. Eggsy might wake any moment. He really needed to get that tea and go back up.

“It means he’s coming back,” Merlin said. He seemed more than he had for centuries, almost blazing with light in Harry’s eyes, far from human, and eager.

“Well,” Harry said. “We’d better not stand round _all_ day, then. Get back to work.”

The milk and sugar could wait. He went back upstairs, ignoring Merlin’s gaze on him.

Eggsy was just rolling over in bed, stretching his arm across the sheets, looking for Harry, his eyes still closed.

“Harry?” he murmured, when Harry climbed back into bed, still half-asleep. He pillowed his head back on Harry’s chest and curled close, sleepy and trusting.

“Yes, I’m here,” Harry said softly. A golden haze of magic was hanging over them, gathering round Eggsy as he rested, hungry for him. Harry tucked the covers back around them and pulled Eggsy close, and shut his eyes to sleep.

*** END ***


End file.
